The original was a better film

The original I liked because it was a simple premise that was fairly self contained. It manages to keep tension and pacing quite consistently throughout the movie. They threw in a little characterization with the brothers and overall I thought the movie worked.

This sequel on the other hand felt like one big martial arts cliche after another. After the original, I was hoping Gareth Evans would be able to take the story outside the apartment without dropping the ball, and I'll say it straight up, the dude is not a very good writer. The plot and pacing was a mess and all over the place. I'm scratching my head why he killed the brother in the opening of the movie. They actually had a pretty nice set up for the brothers in the original, then he just dies in the opening of this movie?

Even the action I had a hard time enjoying. I think it was a combination of lack of tension, things feeling too repetitive, and me noticing martial arts cliches that I normally joke about. In the original, my brother would see certain scenes on the TV and think it's dumb SWAT officers are using martial arts. I was able to excuse this in the original because they did use a lot of guns in the first 45 minutes of the movie. Then I'm assuming they ran out of bullets after that point which was why they resorted to martial arts. This movie on the other hand, there was no excuse. Outside the car chase and like one more scene, pretty much no one used or even carried a gun. In the original it felt like the enemy actually were all trying to swarm the heroes with numbers. This movie you can blatantly see the enemies were standing in line, waiting their turns and attacking one at a time. I really wish films would stop using this method in order to have characters be able to beat multiple opponents. Just watch a Jackie Chan movie. That guy in a lot of his movies can fight multiple enemies without making it look like the enemies are waiting in a shopping line.

I might have to rewatch both movies again, but the characters in this movie felt more unlikable than there were in the first movie. So that's why I think the original was better than this sequel.